


Resolve

by greendragon_templar



Category: Picnic at Hanging Rock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, They Never Kissed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 11:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14954123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greendragon_templar/pseuds/greendragon_templar
Summary: In Victoria, much was left unsaid. In Queensland, he has a chance.





	Resolve

“Just bad luck,” says Albert. “Real bad luck. Who could’ve guessed it’d be so fresh?”

Mike communicates his agreement with a sidelong glance, followed by a nod. His horse jolts beneath him as though it, too, is struggling to stay awake. The only remedy is to stare at the road and try and make some sense out of the looming blackness that will trace them to the hotel.

His watch tells him it’s barely half past ten, but a long, raw conversation with the Reids has left him empty. So empty, in fact, that he only recalls snippets of their talk, of his own weak attempts at consolation: _she looked so happy, you know – like a bird out of its cage_. It makes him flinch, now, because he recalls the effect of that stupid remark: tears in the father’s eyes, and flashes of guilt in the parents’ faces. A prolonged _shudder_.

The more lasting impressions are formed out of that crowd of empty-eyed brothers, the wretched father and the mother with the black dress. Mike remembers staring at the wall between breaks in conversation, taking in the cluttered mantelpiece, bowls of fruit, a dirty jacket slung over the back of a chair. He never spoke a word to Miranda, but he had a coming sense, then - like a haunting spirit, whispering in his ear - of how cruel the severance had been.

He’s glad to have an anchor to reality by his side. Albert grins. “Don’t fall asleep on me.”

“I wasn’t trying to.”

“We’ll be there before you know it.”

Silence falls, and, unable to bear it for longer than a few minutes – minutes in which the Hanging Rock, as always, towers above him, in which he recalls the sprawled forms of three teenage girls – he forces himself to talk.

“They were very generous, weren’t they? They didn’t have to let us stay as long as they did.”

“Yeah, well, when you know as much as they do, you take everything you can get,” Albert retorts. His face is invisible, but the tone of his voice provides all necessary clues to his exhaustion and to his present state of mind.

Another blank space, then: “What was this girl like? Miss Miranda. I couldn’t gather much from what they were saying.”

“ _Like_? I never spoke to her.”

“You saw her. And I reckon you followed them quite some way.”

“Well, I—” Mike swallows. He prefers to be honest on occasions like these; anything less in Albert’s company feels like a betrayal of their understanding. “She seemed very sure of herself. Like she knew exactly who she was and where she was going. If you wanted to compare her to someone, then Irma…”

“What about Irma?”

“She was so unhappy.”

Through the dark Mike can just make out the whites of Albert’s eyes, the faint and pale outlines of his hands as he tugs at the reins. “The way you ran off, it seemed to me that you couldn’t even stomach the idea of marrying her. Can’t say I’d be too keen on the idea of running to England myself, but.”

“It wasn’t like that. There was nothing wrong with her. I think—” So many moments spent together out by the lake, minutes of pained _silence_ , of the supremely uncomfortable sensation that each time he looked into Irma’s face, what he was seeing was not far short of a mirror.

 _Anywhere but home._ Hadn’t they practically echoed each other’s sentimentalities, their troubles? Now that they’re so far apart, and he’s past the stage of trying and failing to forget about her entirely, he can digest his own errors. Two _ungrateful_ aristocrats - the cream of the crop, with no excuse for their loneliness! Certainly, it will never be an easy thing to explain what he sees as his own misfortune, the weight of the family crest. Together, he and Irma are two halves of one miserable whole, strangled, _begging_ for release.

Albert seems to understand, for they leave that particular thread hanging and undisturbed. He begins whistling instead, and the sound lurches Mike back to his reality. He has one thing Irma never had. Many things, in fact. He cannot even begin to compare himself to her situation, not truly; that’s sobering enough. For the first time, he feels a keen sense of remorse, festering inside him like some latent tumour.

“It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have done it,” he announces. “Isn’t that right?”

“What are you on about?”

“Leaving her like I did. Forgetting all about the dinner. God knows where she is now, and if she can ever forgive me. I can’t even begin to understand what her life must be like.”

“Mike—”

“But I _couldn’t_. Not when I knew it was just all my aunt’s doing. And—”

_And I know she didn’t want it, either._

“Where’s this come from?” Albert asks.

“I don’t know.”

Albert clicks his tongue. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve by mixing yourself up in this again. You said it to me yourself. You had to get away.”

“That’s right.”

The dull rhythm of the horses’ hoofs resumes.

“There’s no way in hell you could’ve pulled it off, anyway.” Albert’s voice is soft when he speaks again. “Seemed to me you always had other plans.”

Mike tries to ignore the cold dread in his stomach, carried all the way to and from the Reids’ estate, compounded now by memories of Irma, a blond figure traversing the sodden grounds of Lake View. His other feelings in the moment, those that resurface as he studies Albert, are ones he has yet to address with the same depth. Briefly, echoes sounding from the thick bushland to their left interrupt his train of thought; it sounds like the bark of a dog ( _Just an owl,_ says Albert. _Used to hear them in Toowoomba a bit._ ).

“Thank you,” says Mike, turning his head.

“What for?”

“For coming with me,” Mike says, firm, battling a sea of strange, churning emotion, unsuited to such an uneventful journey. He’s always felt things deeply, except, he’s fallen into the bad habit of either smothering it or hiding it, even from his sisters. “I don’t know I would have managed otherwise.”

“That’s not true,” comes the reply, followed shortly by a laugh. Mike relaxes. “I don’t know how you can say that. You’re a lot braver than me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Staying at the Rock, for one thing. Don’t believe in ghosts but I wouldn’t have wanted to be in your shoes.”

Mike manages to overcome the sense of unease that all mention of the Hanging Rock seems to conjure with a smile, forced, that fades into a feeling of genuine calm. Yet his heart is pounding. His lips form the sound of Albert’s name but he thinks better of it; the occasion is past.

The rest of their trip fails to materialise in his memory, and soon thereafter is lost forever. The bar is still open by the time they crawl, languid, into the hotel – a shabby establishment with dirty floors and cockroaches scuttling in the corners ( _Is this alright?_ Albert asks him, and he seems self-conscious. _It’s perfect_ , Mike answers him, and he’s honest insofar as there are a million more pressing concerns in the moment).

At a table underneath a filthy window, they nurse schooners of beer, half-asleep and with the barest formulation of a plan for the morning. Mike’s far less worried about that, now that the great obstacle (and aim) of their initial journey is ended, than he is about the beer. What limited effect it’s having provides a pleasant dullness. It’s almost enough to mute the feeling he’s been labouring under since Lake View that he did either too much or not enough to express himself, and he’ll be wearing that for the rest of his life, right in front of Albert: the agony of a lost opportunity. It’s almost extinguished, drowned out by the lull of Albert’s voice, the accent that now feels more familiar than his own.

“That enough to knock you out?” Albert presses him, and he’s smiling. Mike blinks at him.

“Of course not. I’m just tired.”

“Alright,” comes the response, and Albert withdraws. “Would’ve been surprised is all.” Glass at his lips, he turns his head aside to observe a huddle of other customers near the entranceway. Most of his fondest memories, Mike notes, boil down to times like this, drinking in silence. Each has been _comfortable_. Utterly absent of expectation. He hopes that perhaps he might live the rest of his life the same way.

After trudging up the stairs they depart to their respective rooms, each with a dank and unimpressive view of either the road or the stables, and to his own consternation Mike feels his heart _ache_.

 _It’s irrational_ , he tells himself as he undresses, staring into the depths of the oil lamp by the bedside. I’m _irrational_.

He can only consider it a blessing when he falls asleep quickly, dreamless. At least, it’s dreamless save the bark of the owl from earlier, repeating itself in an endless loop inside his skull, oddly _distorted_ , almost _yearning_. Each reprise fills his head, growing louder, harsher. Sometime in the ungodly hours of the morning, it wakes him.

For a few minutes, he stays where he is, nestled under the covers, one hand beneath his head. Sighing, then, he slings his legs over the side of the bed and remains there, head in his hands, curiously reflective, absorbed by the darkness of the room. Ever and again, breaks in the stillness, recollections of his time with the Reids returns to him, but the memories no longer have the same clarity they held when the experience was so new. It doesn’t feel like hours ago – it feels like it’s _always_ been there.

Now, he almost convinces himself that Miranda’s family blame him for their entire misfortune. From somewhere far in the recesses of his mind emerge odd imitations of what he knows, that he _believes_ , is reality, and in the fabrications, he figures as the true perpetrator. He begins to believe that he had not left the Reids’ house so much as chased out, tailed by accusations he surely deserves: that he, and he alone, is the root cause of all their undeserved suffering. Perhaps, Sergeant Bumpher was right.

Within ten minutes he redresses himself and is reaching for the doorknob, breathing harder than he ought to, casting one last glance over the room. Barely a coherent thought in his mind except that a walk might somehow do him good, each and every one of his half-baked ideas grinds to a halt upon seeing who stands in the hall.

“Albert.”

Albert freezes on impulse, arms swinging loose at his sides, before finally turning around. “Can’t sleep either, then?”

“No. But I can’t explain why.” Their eyes meet and the frantic rhythm of Mike’s heart returns, quickening in response to the strange emotion behind Albert’s eyes: something close to unhappiness, but even closer to guilt. “What’s wrong?”

“Just a dream,” says Albert. “Just doesn’t happen all that often is all.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike answers; then, feeling woefully inadequate, he changes tack. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“I don’t even know if it’s worth telling. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

“Try me. I want to hear what you have to say.” He steps back from the door encouragingly, and eventually, Albert follows him back into the dimness of the space, shutting the door behind him, pausing near the bed to relight the oil lamp. Mike seats himself on the bed, a bit stiffly, even formally, and Albert does the same.

“It’s been going for a few nights now. It’s just, it’s like this…” He places his hands on his knees, as though to still his leg, restless, jerking this way and that every other second. “We’re at that bloody orphanage all over again. I barely get a look at her before she’s gone. With a man. I call out to them but when he turns around I can’t see his face.”

Mike clasps his hands, cleaning under the nails absentmindedly. The tattoo on Albert’s forearm seems to glow in the low light.

“Your poor sister,” he says, feeling somewhat lost. “Did the fellow look the same as the person who actually took her away? Not his face, but anything else?”

“That’s the thing, you see. I wouldn’t know. I only found out she’d been adopted out when I came back a couple years later.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“What’ve you got to be sorry for?”

He offers a sympathetic look, not knowing where to even begin bridging the gap between their individual experiences. 

Albert stares at his boots, rubbing his fingers against the back of his left hand, vaguely. “It’s just how it is.”

Mike continues to watch him and, gradually, a whole new sense of responsibility encroaches on his mind (he’s used to it, by now, but all the same, he wishes he wasn’t so prone to performing rashly in the second and regretting it ever after, misinterpreting every negative encounter). Albert is so close, now, in more ways than one – in more ways than Mike could ever have hoped for. Alone together, inside the cold little room – they’re alone save their troubles, half-divulged.

Abruptly, Albert swivels himself around so that he’s looking Mike directly in the eyes. Coupled with their physical proximity, Mike is reminded vividly of that day in the boathouse. It feels like an essential piece of his past, now, as necessary to his sense of being as the afternoon he trailed Miranda up the mountain.

“I never told you what I did.”

“What’s that?”

“Right after I got the cheque from your aunt and uncle. I went to the orphanage to ask after Sara. They wouldn’t give me Mr Cosgrove’s address. Even now I don’t have the first idea what’s going on. I sort of… played it down in my head. Told myself things would be fine.”

“So the dreams…?”

Albert nods, once. “Yeah. I’m starting to think I should’ve tried harder. I’ve—I’ve already tried twice. But it mustn’t be enough.”

“You can hardly blame yourself for what has happened.”

“I _have_ to know what happened.”

As he listens, Mike crosses one leg over the other, beginning to lose the feeling in it. “I think I understand what you mean. Not exactly, of course, but at least, with respect to your dreams. I keep thinking about what I saw at the Hanging Rock. If I wasn’t somehow truly to blame.”

“Bullshit. It had nothing to do with you,” Albert says back, and Mike can’t help but smile.

“It really is a good thing that both of us left Lake View. You couldn’t say that at home.”

“Couldn’t I?” Albert says, losing some of the tension in his shoulders as he leans forward, and laughs. Mike becomes acutely aware of a prickling, warm sensation, just below the skin, shooting right through his blood and through to the heart. In company, his lonely reflections from earlier feel of almost no consequence. Miranda, Irma; he can't see his thoughts of them dissipating any time in the immediate future, the guilt that follows like a convict's ball and chain. But he can weather it. He'll bear it for however long it takes when happiness is at the same time so _near_.

But it cannot last.

He cannot be selfish. Especially not when he knows how deeply Albert’s loss has cut – comparable, perhaps, to the torture now endured by the Reids. In both instances, a missing person – no body, no confirmation, no inkling of possible whereabouts. Perhaps the measure or degree of pain is arguable, but that’s all arbitrary.

He cannot be the one to call the shots.

“Did you say that you’ve tried before?”

“Yes. Twice, like I said before. But the thing is, I don’t even know what I would’ve done if I found out. If that man really is alright, as people say, I wouldn’t just be able to take her with me.”

“But you still tried.”

“Yeah. I said I’d be back.”

“She’s fortunate to have a brother like you.”

“It’s the least I owe her. I handled things alright by myself, but I’ve got ten years on her. She was never cut out for that kind of life. For the way she was treated.”

Mikes thinks, fleetingly, of his own sisters back home. Several years apart, he’s grown distant in recent years, but at least he knows where they are, and their likely future. The only thing he knows about orphanages comes straight from Albert.

“You should go,” Mike says, and lets his shoulders fall, lets his heart hammer inside him until the roar of blood is the only thing he can hear. Albert’s head turns sharply; his erratic movements cease altogether.

“Go where?”

“Back to Melbourne. Or Ballarat. Wherever it is. I can’t keep you here with me.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I mean it. The most important part of all this is over, Albert. I told you that the first thing I wanted to do was pay my respects, and now that’s finished.”

“I can’t just turn back—”

“Yes, you can,” Mike replies. “I want you to. You need to know the truth or I know you'll never be happy with me."

An expression of incredulity comes over Albert's face, falling to fear, and he momentarily stumbles over his words. Mike doesn't want to do himself the disservice of clinging to it in hope of reciprocation, but it's hard to resist. “You’ll go on by yourself, is that it?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know.”

“I made you a promise," Albert responds, firm. "I want to keep to it."

“But you’ve broken no vow,” says Mike, forcing himself to make eye contact. “You have such strong feelings, who am I to tell you that they’re wrong? Don’t you remember, at the soiree, when I told you I wanted to go and have another look at the Rock, based only on what I felt?”

“You're hopeless. You don’t have a bloody clue how far it is to get back to Melbourne from here. We’d end up missing each other.”

“I can handle myself. I’m not who you should be worrying about.”

“It’s not fair to you.”

“It’s not... it’s not _about_ me.”

Albert rises to his feet, not breaking eye contact, and stuffs his hands in his pockets. He looks like he’s trying to decipher a riddle, some clue beneath Mike’s own skin.

Bowing his head, Mike endeavours to ignore the sick feeling in his gut. “It’s not right, keeping you so far away from Victoria. I had no idea about Sara.”

“You’d do this for me? For Sara?” Albert asks, tentatively enunciating the words, and the wave of confused relief that crosses his face is barely enough to offset Mike’s sense that somewhere inside him, something is _crumbling_.

“Of course,” he says, with false conviction. A hand grasps the sheets in a death grip when Albert moves back toward the door, _excruciatingly_ slow. He's come so far, he knows - so far since he left his family and all he knew, so far since he departed Lake View, riding on little more than the strength of a promise, tempered by the constraints of reality, a furious uncle in his wake (money was always _going_ to be a problem; he should have known that from the outset). And now, in some dingy hotel room in the middle of nowhere, the opportunity proffers itself again. He can kill two birds with one stone.

He can't send Albert off alone, or ignore the sense that as long he remained ignorant of Sara, Albert could not be entirely compliant. Yet he can't betray himself in the same breath. Every part of him pulls against it.

In one thoughtless rush, he announces himself to the world.

“Wait.”

Albert glances back, brow furrowed. “I won’t be going anywhere until the morning.”

“I know, I know, I just—” He clambers to his feet and crosses the short length of the room in a few strides, until they are again face to face. “I’m being so _stupid_. I don’t know what I’ve been thinking.” Suddenly, he’s breathless. “I can postpone everything. Let me come with you.”

“You want to go _back_ there?”

“Not to Lake View. I don’t want to see that horrible place ever again.”

“But you can travel,” says Albert, bewildered. “Just like we talked about. Starting tomorrow, if you like. That’s the most important thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You’ll lose all the ground we’ve covered in the last few weeks,” Albert says, tone edging on a laugh. But there is another shift, almost unnoticeable, in his face; something brightens. “It doesn’t make sense to chuck that away.”

“See, you don’t understand. This isn’t about the travel – I mean, it is, but not _entirely_.” He’s rambling, now, but so clearly on the cusp of something that he doesn’t even pause to be ashamed of himself. “Half of the reason—no, more than half of the reason, if I’m being honest, is about you.”

His own boldness makes him shudder. It’s like he’s watching himself from afar, incapable of intervening. But the silence, arresting as it is, is a good enough cue to go on.

“I want you to come with me, I don’t care where to. That doesn’t matter. It was always important that we at least made it this far. But that’s it.” They are almost too close for comfort; it would be stifling with anybody else, with the types of people who never seem to understand how to behave around strangers, or anyone for that matter. There are no boundaries or preconceptions or rules here. Mike’s fingers grasp for the front of Albert’s waistcoat, and this time he does not relent. “Travelling isn’t my priority. Not when you’re here.”

Albert’s unmoving and Mike’s never felt less in control, and yet so utterly unaffected. “I want to help you find your sister. You’re my priority.”

In hindsight, the precise order of what follows is lost. Mike thinks that, perhaps, the first tactile sensation was the back of Albert’s neck beneath his hand, and then, _euphoria_ : the glorious knowledge that he’s no longer shackled, not even remotely, to the formalities that have so heavily defined and restrained his past. He can’t stop himself, amidst the thick, hot haze that clouds his mind, as he brings their mouths together. He’s hungry, he’s been _starving_. He doesn’t see fit to regret any of his actions until they’re pulling apart.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hurried. The world feels false. He hasn't been impulsive since Cambridge, since he was caught, since—

Albert's voice, low, breaks through to him. “It’s alright. It’s alright.”

Albert’s hands at his face, thumbs pressed just under his jaw, tip him over the edge; then, he knows that Albert’s kissing him, of his own accord. Mike laughs into it. He fumbles at the base of Albert’s neck, scrambling for purchase, hauling him further in. Neither have the slightest _clue_ what they’re doing and really, Mike decides, it’s all simply a part of the experience, of the feelings he associates with it later on. The hand not behind Albert’s head hangs uselessly by his hip; the temperature is making him tremble. He no longer cares.

Stumbling nearer to the bed, falling back onto it, half on the edge, they take a minute to look at each other and laugh. They try again, desperate, searching out comfortable places for hands to go, breathing hard. They fall into a motion that looks no further than an immediate delight in having what’s been denied. Mike’s hand goes to Albert’s chest and he can feel his heart. The kisses are gentle, gradual, unplanned, _constant_ ; light touches and long, considered studies of each other’s features, with hands and eyes.

There’s no real way of knowing for how long he’s wanted this, whether since the boathouse or before (almost _certainly_ before then – when he dared himself to believe he could recover from what happened in England). For that matter, he doesn’t know for certain at what point Albert must have concluded he felt the same. The way they hold each other, the way they kiss, is evidence enough. The world’s spinning. Mike doesn’t want to stop, not even just to appreciate the cards he has been dealt. If he had a hint before, even the barest hint his adoration was reciprocated, he’s incapable of fathoming the result. The fears of before have passed away. 

If one good thing has arisen from the entire wretched mess, it's Albert; no matter what thoughts possess him, absurd as they are, he has this. He has reassurance. _Grounding_.

“Let me go with you.”

“Yeah,” Albert says, almost slurred, and draws him in, kisses him again.

It grants Mike the courage to go on, gasping: “Do you love me? Really?”

Albert holds him at arm’s length, still cradling his face in his hands; Mike places his own hand over Albert’s, against the fingertips skimming his ear. It's exhilarating; it defies the order of the world as Mike has come to understand it, of what his life will bring. It’s an _affirmation_ , stripped of shame.

He answers with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> still reveling in the fact this series exists and has enabled me to write yet another post-canon fic with the benefit of knowing it's actually canon. take my garbage


End file.
